Imperial Innovations invests £5.1m in new biotech start-up

AIM-listed technology investor Imperial Innovations invested £5.1m in Artios Pharma, a new biotech start-up launched on Wednesday.

Imperial Innovations contributed £5.1m to the £25m series A funding round, giving it a 14.9% interest in the new Cambridge- based company.

Artios, which is backed by a syndicate of leading European and US life science investors including SV Life Sciences, Merck Ventures, Arix Bioscience PLC, CRT Pioneer Fund and AbbVie Ventures, will build a pipeline of DNA damage response therapies from Cancer Research UK and other global companies, and progress its Pol-theta enzyme programme.

Bobby Soni, director of healthcare ventures at Imperial Innovations, said: "Targeting the DNA damage response is an exciting and promising field of biology.

“DNA damage response drug products have generated considerable interest following the recent clinical successes of PARP inhibitors which have highlighted the potential for DNA damage response drugs to cause selective death in cancer cells.”

The new company, which was formed with assets from Cancer Research Technology, the technology transfer unit of Cancer Research UK, is led by Dr. Niall Martin, who was co-founder and chief operating officer of MissionTherapeutics, another Cambridge-based drug discovery company which Imperial Innovations has also invested in.

Shares in Imperial Innovations were up 0.78% to 447.20p at 1153 BST.